Mercenary Geologist editor Mickey Fulp suggested another price drop is looming, if only because gold usually hits a seasonal low in July or August. But he seemed unperturbed by the events of April. “For me as a guy who owns 10% of his net wealth in physical gold in my physical possession, I look at these things as buying opportunities,” he said. “I welcome the volatility in the market.”

I’m encouraged by the amount of buying you see in parts of the world that are always the main buyers and they’re not acting as if they expect significantly lower prices.—Eric Coffin, editor of HRA Advisories

Nor was Eric Coffin particularly concerned. The HRA Advisories editor said, “I’m encouraged by the amount of buying you see in parts of the world that are always the main buyers and they’re not acting as if they expect significantly lower prices…. If you look in the press in the last month it’s bearish, bearish, bearish” with references to a 300-tonne sell-off. “They probably bought that much in China last month—at least.”

That remark prompted Berry to ask about the “granny effect,” in which Chinese grandmothers buy the stuff while institutions sell. Jay Taylor, editor of Gold, Energy & Tech Stocks, responded that “gold is increasingly a bipolar market” with a paper market much bigger than its physical counterpart. “This move out of gold was solely a paper phenomenon,” he said. “There was tremendous physical buying, which I think kept the price from going lower.”

He added, “I view gold as a hedge against financial calamity…. If you view gold as speculation and an investment, that’s a much different ball game and that’s a paper market.”

Coffin said his Chinese mother-in-law is “not a gold bug at all.” She’s lived through tough times, like the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. “When people like her buy jewellery, it’s not the 14-carat crap. It’s the real deal…. She lived through periods where you had to grab what you could, put it in your pockets and run.”

Sounding rather blasé about the sell-off, he added, “Companies like Goldman Sachs do this three or four times a year. They just picked gold this time. I’m not reading too much into it.”